


Saving You (The Promises Kept Remix)

by laireshi



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: AI Tony, Angst, Fix-It, Hydra Steve Rogers, Infinity Gems, M/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2018-12-31 17:36:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12137631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laireshi/pseuds/laireshi
Summary: Tony knows Steve’s weak spot, and he knows that it’shim.For once, it’s not a scary thought, because he will do exactly what Steve asked him to do: he will fight, he will try, and he will succeed in bringing Steve down.Because he loves Steve, and because Steve loves him, too.





	Saving You (The Promises Kept Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [navaan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/gifts).
  * Inspired by [I Promise You, When I'm Awake](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11448681) by [navaan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan). 
  * In response to a prompt by [navaan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan) in the [remixrevivalmadness2017](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/remixrevivalmadness2017) collection. 



> Thanks to Kiyaar for beta!
> 
> There's a paragraph all in italics in the middle of this fic; it's a quote from Navaan's original story.

“Are you sure about this, Stark?” Clint asks.

“Yes,” Tony replies without any hesitation. “It’s time to raise the bar.”

He can’t go with them, not for this part. It has to go smoothly, and he’s not sure he could keep calm during his one mission.

He remembers everything Steve said, and he knows, theoretically, what they’re going to find, but knowing and seeing it are two different things.

He opens his armour compartment and very carefully takes out the violet Gem hidden there. He deposits it in Hawkeye’s hand.

He wonders, if holding it with real skin and real body is different than being an AI in an armour. He should remember: he did wield the whole Infinity Gauntlet, after all. But the memories of what it felt like to have a body are incomprehensible to him now.

Soon, though. Soon.

“Comms?” Tony asks.

Clint points at his ears. His comms are integrated with his hearing aids. Good. 

“Good luck,” Tony says.

Clint gives him a lopsided smile. 

“Riri . . .”

“I’ll be fine,” Riri says. “We’ll do it.”

Tony can see she’s putting on a brave face for him, and he wishes he could go in her place, but they need a genius, and it can’t be him. 

“Go save . . .” The world, he meant to say, but right now, they’re saving _him_.

Clint nods anyway, and closes his hand over the Space Gem. They vanish.

Tony waits. He has nothing to do, and so his thoughts circulate back to Steve, every time.

He loves Steve; it’s just a part of his programming.

(It’s easier to believe that than to find other excuses for why he’s still trying to save a monster. It’s his _programming_ , he doesn’t have a choice, he’s a computer program.

Except, when he had a body made of flesh, when he was _human_ , he always loved Steve, too, and he never had a choice in it.

It’s _Steve_.)

There’s no explosion of light, nothing; next moment Clint and Riri are back to him—and Clint is holding Tony’s comatose body.

It’s a curious, to look at himself like that. Out-of-body experience, he thinks grimly. 

“Lay him down here,” he says.

“Tony, this is—” Riri interrupts, but thankfully Clint listens to him without arguments.

“I know what I’m doing, Riri. Go help Victor with the time machine, will you?” 

“That’d be hard for her, Anthony,” Victor says, and Tony looks behind him to see him standing in the doorway. “This plan of yours . . . “

“It’ll work, if you all stop hovering,” Tony snaps.

He _has to_ check, and do it now. 

He kills the connection to his armour, materialises himself next to his body itself. The armour falls down with a loud _thud_ but Tony doesn’t pay it any attention.

His body looks . . . bad. As if there’s something lacking in him. But that’s exactly what he wants to fix.

“Wakey wakey,” he says, and touches his own temples.

His fingers almost go through—he’s not corporeal, after all. And then the connection catches, and Tony’s falling down, fast.

He blacks out.

When he sits up with a grunt, everything hurts, and this is his first cue that everything went right. He raises his hands, and he’s shaky, but it’s his human hands looking at him. The RT is alight, bright in his chest, and his heart is beating.

He has his body again.

He smiles sharply. “Time to bring Steve back.”

He turns to Victor, to ask about the progress, but he’s already walking out of the room, a weird expression on his face.

Tony shrugs. Step one of their plan is finished. Let’s see how Steve deals fighting _all_ of Tony, body and soul. 

***

Tony sees his name put back on the Hydra’s _wanted_ list and grins.

 _That’s more like it_ , he thinks.

“It’s almost like you want him to fight,” Natasha says.

“Oh, I do,” Tony says sharply. “Because he _is_ Steve. Because I need him to give us his absolute best—or worst, as it is. I want him to _try_. That’s the only way we can defeat him, that’s the only way I know how to bring our Steve back. I wouldn’t trust him if he turned up here tomorrow saying he’s good. We have to bring him down, and then find our friend.”

Natasha’s observing him with a small smile. “With you acting like that, we might yet win,” she says.

The problem is: Tony has all of his memories. Everything that happened until Carol knocked him out. Everything that Steve said to him, when Tony was comatose. Everything that happened to his digital self, too. 

_He loved you_.

Tony almost believes that, now. And he knows Steve, this evil Steve who’s not like Steve at all and simultaneously exactly like a warped Steve from Tony’s nightmares, and he knows when he’s lying.

_He loved you, and he admired you._

Then why, Tony wonders, was he even kept alive?

Tony knows Steve’s weak spot, and he knows that it’s _him._ For once, it’s not a scary thought, because he will do exactly what Steve asked him to do: he will fight, he will try, and he will succeed in bringing Steve down. 

Because he loves Steve, and because Steve loves him, too.

***

He talks to Steve, not-Steve. It’s easier than he thought it’d be. There’s just one message he has to pass. One promise.

_I'm going to stop you now, Steve. Because you would want me to, if you hadn't been warped. Because I love you and it's time we talk about that without the word falling apart around us or one of us going evil. It's just time, don't you think? Because you love me too._

He’ll keep his word.

***

It ends on a battlefield, like it always does.

“You think I love you?” Steve mocks.

“I know you do,” Tony corrects.

Steve punches him. Tony doesn’t try to dodge. Another hit, and Tony goes down, and Steve smashes his shield into his helmet, again and again.

It’s happened already, many years ago. It won’t end any other way now.

“Finish it,” Tony taunts as Steve raises his shield high. 

And _freezes_.

“Can’t hurt me after all?” Tony asks, his smile bloody. He throws Steve off himself, and Steve doesn’t even seem to notice, staring at his own hands like they betrayed him. “You _are_ Steve. And I _will_ save you,” Tony says.

The Gems are ready. The Gems have been ready since Tony stepped on the battlefield, here, but he knows Steve; he knows he had to prove his point first. 

He opens the armour compartment and _wills_ the Gems to create the Gauntlet, and he puts it on.

It’s not any less terrifying the second time round. The temptation isn’t any easier.

 _A world where the incursions never happened,_ Tony thinks, and grins, almost feral. He won’t be fixing that today. He won’t be fixing that, ever. The time has gone on. 

He looks down at Steve.

“Come back,” he says, his voice vibrating with power. “The Steve we all know and love. It’s time for you to come back.”

“It won’t work,” Steve says.

Tony’s mouth twitches. “My track record with the Gauntlet is better than yours.”

He _wills_ it to happen.

It’s an instant, and Tony knows only by the look in Steve’s eyes: yes, he succeeded. 

_His_ Steve is back.

Tony hides the Gems again. 

“Tony,” Steve whispers.

Tony extends a hand to him. To his delight, Steve takes it.

“Thank you,” Steve says. “I’m sorry. And thank you. And—”

“What do you remember?” Tony asks quietly. Around them, the world is on fire; the last effects of bringing the full Hydra monster down. They’ll take care of it, soon, they’ll do what they can to stabilise everything until the citizens, civilians, not superheroes, will take care of their country.

But first, there are other things to do.

“Everything,” Steve replies, his face ashen.

“Then you remember this,” Tony says. “I love you. And I know you love me. And this hasn’t changed. And it’s time to talk about it.”

Steve runs his hand down his face. “I hurt you.”

It’s wrong, Tony thinks, to be in this position. It should be him apologising, not Steve.

“And I’m telling you it doesn’t matter. Now we move on, Steve. Now we rebuild. Now we do _something better_.”

Steve’s looking at him with almost desperate hope in his eyes. Like he can’t believe the horrors can go away.

But he’s not guilty, here.

“We rebuild,” Tony repeats. “And then, at the end of it, we’re going to have that talk, you and me. And I will tell you everything. I’ll tell you how much of a hero you were, you are to me. I’ll tell you how this isn’t why I love you. I love you, because you’re Steve Rogers, and you’re a good man. And there won’t be anything left unsaid between us anymore, Steve, and _then_ we can move forward. _Together_.”

Steve smiles. It’s brittle, but it’s real, and Tony feels relief wash over him. “I’d like that, Tony,” Steve says.

And then he stands at Tony’s side.


End file.
